FRAME MODE MPLS packetlife.

net

Protocol Header Conceptual Components

Control Plane · Facilitates label exchange between
neighboring LSRs using LDP or TDP (includes the
distribution protocol and LIB)
Forwarding/Data Plane · Forwards packets based on
label or destination IP address (includes the FIB and LFIB)

Label Protocols
LDP TDP

Label (20 bits) · Unique label value Hello Address 224.0.0.2 255.255.255.255

Experimental/QoS (3 bits) · CoS-mapped QoS marking Hello Port UDP 646 UDP 711

Bottom of Stack (1 bit) · Indicates label is last in the stack Adjacency Port TCP 646 TCP 711

Time To Live (8 bits) · Hop counter mapped from IP TTL Proprietary No Cisco

Label Switched Path Terminology

Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) · Standards based
label distribution protocol defined in RFC 3036
Tag Distribution Protocol (TDP) · Cisco's proprietary
predecessor to LDP
Label Switching Router (LSR) · Any router capable of
label switching
Label-Switched Path (LSP) · The unidirectional path
through one or more LSRs taken by a label switched
packet belonging to an FEC
Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC) · A group of
packets which are forwarded in an identical manner
Label Information Base (LIB) · Contains all labels
known by an LSR via a label distribution protocol
Forwarding Information Base (FIB) · Routing
database for unlabeled (IP) packets
Label FIB (LFIB) · Routing database for labeled packets
Customer (C) · IP-only routers internal to customer network Interim Packet Propagation · An LSR temporarily
Customer Edge (CE) · C routers which face PE routers performs IP routing while waiting to learn the necessary
MPLS labels
Provider Edge (PE) · LSRs which form the MPLS-IP boundary
Penultimate Hop Popping (PHP) · The second-to-last
Provider (P) · MPLS-only LSRs in provider network LSR in an LSP removes the MPLS label so the last LSR
only has to perform an IP lookup
MPLS Configuration
Troubleshooting
! ** Enable CEF **
ip cef show mpls interfaces
!
! ** Select label protocol ** show mpls ldp neighbors
mpls label protocol ldp
! show mpls ldp bindings [detail] (LIB)
! ** Enable MPLS on IP interfaces **
show mpls forwarding-table [detail] (LFIB)
interface FastEthernet0/0
ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.252 show ip cef [detail] (FIB)
mpls ip
! ** Raise MPLS MTU to accomodate multilabel stack ** debug mpls events
mpls mtu 1512
debug mpls ldp bindings

by Jeremy Stretch v1.0